The 85th IEC General Meeting conducted as ‘hybrid

This year’s IEC General Meeting took place in Dubai 2-7 October, hosted by the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology (MoIAT), which is the United Arab Emirates’ National Committee of the IEC.

 

Due to travelling limitations caused by the Corona pandemic, the meetings and associated events were made hybrid, i.e. with some people attending at site, while the majority were attending remotely online.


The participants represented industry and relevant bodies in the 88 IEC Member countries and the 84 IEC Affiliate countries (essentially developing countries).


In 2020 this annual event was exclusively online from the IEC Central Office in Geneva.

 

In 2019 it was taking place physically in Shanghai, and was biggest such event ever, with nearly 4000 people attending, including members of many Technical Committees (TCs).

 

Like in 2020, there were this year no TC meetings, so the agenda was mainly limited to the regular managerial meetings of:

  • Standardization Management Board (SMB),
  • Conformity Assessment Board (CAB),
  • Council Board and
  • Council.


At the CAB meeting, status reports were given on regional certification in the Arabic Gulf region (G-marking scheme) and in the Eurasian region (EAC-marking scheme), respectively.  

Some additional meetings took place, including:

  • Affiliate countries’ Forum (AF),
  • Workshop for Industrializing Countries (WIC),
  • Young Professionals workshops.


The top level IEC Council meeting (general assembly) was online only and attended by about 180 people around the world, which is certainly amazing not least because of the local time differences.


More information is available at https://gm2021.iec.ch/

The editor of this newsletter participated in several of the meetings as member of the CAB and also in the role as IEC Ambassador for training of developing countries in the IEC Conformity assessment systems, primarily the IECEE/CB scheme.

Since attending online, it was unfortunately little opportunity also this time for bi-lateral discussions and consultations with managers of standards organizations and product approval bodies in various countries worldwide.

For further information, please contact the editor

 

* This article is written by Trond Sollie

 

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